Systematic Leader

Dr. Sarah Brown is a corporate coach and trainer who focuses on helping women executives become more successful and enjoy themselves as they build their career. In this interview you’ll learn the tools to become more successful and happier in your career.

Highlights from the interview:

• Why her nine-year-old self would be impressed with who she has become.
• How she uses journaling to help her grow.
• She struggles with downtime.
• The importance of having uninterrupted time.
• Looking at our routines can help us find patterns that we can tweak to help us grow.
• How she describes the voice in her head.
• Why she gets so excited about running workshops.
• The speed of information and what to do about it.
• Finding balance in her career.
• When someone’s motivational needs are not being met how can you turn it around.
• How to be more direct to create clarity between you and and employee.
• How can you outsource other people’s strengths to support your weaknesses.
• What is self coaching?
• What tools you need to keep you on task.
• Understanding what goals you need to support yourself.
• What the true meaning of the Velveteen Rabbit story is all about.
• Favorite book, podcast, and speaker.
• Story of Abraham Lincoln that will inspire you.

You can learn about Sarah over at her website, Sarah E. Brown. You can also listen to her podcast, The KTS Success Factor. She helps women executives thrive in their career.

And as always if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing just reach out on Dig to Fly and I’ll do my best to get them on. If you love the interview please take 30 seconds to rate the Dig to Fly podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!

David Jenyns is the founder and author of Systemology. In this interview you’ll learn the value of creating systems in your business and/or career to help you save time and reduce errors.

Highlights from the interview:

• How his dad created a game out of behaving and helping around the home.
• Why his brother struggled with the game.
• What his personality type is like and how it affects his business.
• Why the Dig to Fly podcast was started.
• How he puts a system around his struggles.
• The ability to not act on the desire to be hands on and let other people use their strengths in a business.
• Why the biggest gains are hidden in things we resist.
• Committing your time to the essential things.
• How to create positive restraints so you work on your difficult project.
• How to break bad habits and build a better system around changing behavior.
• Understanding how personalities are different and systems need to be built for different types of people.
• The value of showing other people how to solve a problem so it deepens your knowledge around it.
• Why we shouldn’t over engineer our business systems.
• How do we flip the stories we tell ourselves, so we focus on the essential tasks.
• The biggest misconception around creating systems in your business.
• The value of getting into flow while you work.
• Unplugging helps us get deeper into our work.
• David’s most impactful book from a business and personal perspective, favorite podcast and favorite speaker.
• Creating a systems culture in your organization. 

You can learn about David over at his website Systemology. You can also pick up the book Systemology and get started on improving your systems.

And as always if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing just reach out on Dig to Fly and I’ll do my best to get them on. If you love the interview please take 30 seconds to rate the Dig to Fly podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!

Peter Shankman is serial entrepreneur, author and founder of Help a Reporter Out. His ability to cultivate his ADHD and how he has turned it into a superpower is a fascinating part of this interview. 

Highlights from the interview:

• What are the voices in Peter’s head like?
• Why working out helps his massive ADHD.
• How the diagnosis of ADHD in adulthood helped him understand himself better.
• The balance of being introverted and extroverted and how he uses this to his advantage in his business.
• Cultivating the superpowers within his ADHD, so they support his life instead of tear him a part.
• Understanding what matters is key to living the life that he wants.
• Accepting that you did the best you could with what you have.
• Understanding the power of bravery by slaying the demons in your head.
• Why he sleeps in his gym clothes.
• Our inner demons are often too strong to defeat.
• Why he abstains from drinking alcohol.
• Where he gets his passion for life.
• How he measures his work happiness.
• Where he does his long form writing.
• Humans are not meant to be sedentary creatures and how he figures out ways to keep moving throughout the day.
• What activity helps him calm his inner demons.
• Why he focuses on being slightly better than everyone else. He doesn’t believe in being a superstar. 
• How he comes up with all his ideas.
• Finding unique ways to solve problems.
• How people can make a big leap in their careers.
• The importance of grounding yourself in gratitude.
• Why he sees his ADHD as his greatest gift.
• How he views failure and how it’s helped him build his resilience.
• A failed company that was too early to the market.
• How his cats kept him humble after he sold his company for millions of dollars.
• Everyone’s favorite part of this podcast - Peter’s favorite things.

You can learn about Peter over at his website Shankman.com. You can also connect with him on Twitter.

And as always if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing just reach out on Dig to Fly and I’ll do my best to get them on. If you love the interview please take 30 seconds to rate the Dig to Fly podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!

Judy Robinett is an author, investor, entrepreneur, former CEO of private and public companies and a wealth of information to help people build their careers. In this interview you’ll learn about how to build connections with anyone and how to deepen these relationships so you can grow your career.

Highlight from the interview:

• How Judy got over her shyness.
• How she made talking to people into a game, so she could get better at it.
• What Judy was like as a kid.
• Getting over our fears so we can go after what we want.
• Why we need to challenge our assumptions.
• How she coached herself to start talking to people, so she could grow her career.
• The internal flip that she made within herself that helped her create deeper connections with other people.
• The extra special touches she did after meeting people to help develop the relationship.
• How she views people through the lens of Oprah or Martha Stewart.
• The difference between her inner voice in her twenties and now.
• The greatest gift you can give to someone else.
• Why adding value should always be your first step when connecting with people.
• How she processed a big money failure.
• Understanding the emotional toll a difficulty can take if you don’t process it and let it go.
• Where we put our focus and why it matters so much.
• What she loves doing within her business. 
• End of day routine that helps her calibrate and improve her career.
• The power of a good quote to help with the reflection process.
• How to cultivate a healthy mindset.
• What makes you happy and when is the last time you did those things?
• Why she struggles with the winter.
• Why she wanted to start her first business.
• Everyone’s favorite part of the interview: Favorite book, podcast and speaker.

You can learn about Judy over at her website Judy Robinett. You can also connect with her on LinkedIn and let her know what you think of the interview.

And as always if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing just reach out on Dig to Fly and I’ll do my best to get them on. If you love the interview please take 30 seconds to rate the Dig to Fly podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!

This is the 2nd part of "Do Work You Love" based on a workshop that I did with my community. In this episode we dove deeper into understanding yourself and how you can build your career foundation.

Karl talks about doing work you love. In Part 1 of this live workshop I share stories about how I figured out my formula to do work that I love. I also share stories from people I’ve interviewed and researched to help paint the whole picture. My career has ebbed and flowed, but I’ve always stayed true to my North Star.

Highlights from the show:

• How we perceive our work.
• Making little shifts to make a big impact in our careers.
• Being the captain of your thoughts.
• Learning how we can coach ourselves to reach our goals.
• My dream of becoming a great writer.
• The journey of my career and how I’ve leveraged my value.
• Peeling away our armor so we can do work that we love.

Stay tuned for next week. We’ll publish Part 2 of this live talk I did with my community.

And as always if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing just reach out on Dig to Fly and I’ll do my best to get them on. If you love the interview please take 30 seconds to rate the Dig to Fly podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!

Julie Broad is the founder of Book Launchers and the author of Self-publish and Succeed. In this interview you’ll hear about how she built her businesses and developed a mindset that helped her succeed. One of the main parts of this conversation is how she dealt with employee burnout and what systems she put in to place to help with this in the future.

Highlights from the interview:

• What she was like as a kid and how it influenced her to get back into books.
• Her personality type and what people assume when they meet her.
• How she has grown her team.
• Growing as an organization and putting emphasis on taking care of themselves.
• Setting the tone to help build the company culture.
• How to deal with an employee that burns out.
• How to make sure people feel comfortable speaking up at work.
• Creating a safe place to work.
• Finding the space to be creative.
• How she finds ways to recharge her energy.
• Growing her mindset so she can grow her business.
• How she grew her first business.
• She then pivoted her first business into her current business.
• Writing and launching a book that went to number one on Amazon.
• Why people need to put marketing at the beginning of the process of writing a book.
• What her personality type is and how she was able to start and build a successful business.
• Taking a long look and digging into your past so you can grow from it.
• How to look at your fear, acknowledge it and still do what you want to do.
• How Julie was able to encapsulate the Dig to Fly Method in one story.
• Things will usually be ok.
• How life unfolds depending on our perspective.
• Looking for patterns of where we are uncomfortable to help us grow.
• Finding autonomy in our day.
• And the most popular segment: “Favorite things”.

You can learn about Julie over at her website Julie Broad and her business Book Launchers. You can also connect with her on LinkedIn.

And as always if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing just reach out on Dig to Fly and I’ll do my best to get them on. If you love the interview please take 30 seconds to rate the Dig to Fly podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!

Wylie McGraw is a performance accelerator. He works with CEOs, entrepreneurs, executives, influencers and public figures to optimize their actions for big gains.

Highlight from the show:

• How he digs deep to get people to where they want to go.
• Why his best still wasn’t good enough for his father.
• Being pushed to be perfect.
• Understanding why his strive for perfectionism was so toxic.
• How he got into the sport of bull riding.
• Finding what he wanted to do on his own.
• How he found his gifts in the armed forces.
• Embracing his inner volatility.
• Utilizing our energy so we can get the important things done.
• Why leaders are struggling in today’s environment.
• Giving himself permission to be present.
• Can you sit with an emotion that feels uncomfortable?
• Being introduced to Mickey Mantle.
• Why do we hide behind the labels that we create?
• Getting stuck in labels.
• Surrendering your control over things.
• How to face difficult feelings and situations in your life.
• We are going about success the wrong way.
• How he deals with his anger.
• How we harbor our unresolved stress.
• Allowing ourselves to dig into our uncomfortable conversations.
• Developing self-mastery.

You can learn about Wylie over at his website WyleMcGraw.com. You can also follow him on LinkedIn.

And as always if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing just reach out on Dig to Fly and I’ll do my best to get them on. If you love the interview please take 30 seconds to rate the Dig to Fly podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!

Devin Ambron is an entrepreneur, marketing strategist and productivity specialist. He shares how he has built a successful business and is now in a pivot as he figures out his next move. I love how honest he is in this interview as he explains his strategy and process.

Highlights from the interview:

• Why he graduated high school with strangers.
• Learning about what he liked and what he was interested in.
• How he learned why medical school wasn’t for him.
• Digging into the clues that helped him figure out his passion.
• How he got fired from a sales job.
• What he learned from his time as an Uber driver.
• You can only map backwards. This is important to finding our threads in our careers.
• When to let an idea go and move on to the next thing in your career.
• Seeking change is healthy when balanced within a career.
• Test, move and shift how you can help your customer.
• Finding opportunities at any stage in a business.
• Optimizing your productivity by understanding your personality.
• The important questions you should ask yourself before you take on a new task.
• How we can leverage other people’s skills to help grow stronger together.
• What the first problem is in everyone’s business.
• Learning the basic processes of business when you have to start over.
• The power of structuring your business, so it makes you happy.
• Creating things for ourselves and not judging ourselves on the results.
• Measuring yourself against yourself and not anyone else.
• Finding your tribe.
• Dealing with uncertainty.
• Everyone’s favorite part of the show - Rapid fire questions.

You can learn about Devin over at his website Devin Ambron. You can also learn more about him over at LinkedIn.

And as always if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing just reach out on Dig to Fly and I’ll do my best to get them on. If you love the interview please take 30 seconds to rate the Dig to Fly podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!

Tony Hsieh, a Co-founder of Zappos, passed away last year and it’s made me want to listen to this interview from 10 years ago. I interviewed Tony about how he overcame his fears and turned them into fuel to build an even stronger business.

It’s cool to see how my interview style has grown and also in many ways stayed the same.I cringe at how I ended the interview. I was so nervous that he didn’t even see it coming. It made me laugh out loud.

Highlights from the interview:

• Why Tony quit his well paying day job.
• How he looked within and decided what he should do next with his career.
• How he started Link Exchange and sold it for life changing money.
• Why money doesn’t matter that much and why we shouldn’t dictate our career decisions.
• Why Link Exchange almost fell apart.
• What he learned from Link Exchange and how he used these learnings to help him build a more successful company.
• When Tony went all in on Zappos.
• How he looked at going to school at Harvard and his mindset, so he could keep doing the things he loved.
• Growing his confidence.
• Putting in the time to master a skill
• Graduating from Harvard.
• Most people fail at their first business idea.
• How his definition of success has changed over time.
• His latest definition of success. This was a precursor to how he viewed life and how his spiral downward might have led to his death.
• How he was very afraid when he first started talking to large groups. What he did to become more comfortable speaking to audiences.
• Why our view of public speaking runs very deep.
• The most important part of hiring someone for your company.
• How the Amazon acquisition of Zappos was different from most of the other acquisitions that Amazon had done before.
• If he had to start Zappos all over again what he would do.
• How he sped up the communication process inside of Zappos so they could move faster.
• Why people should understand and appreciate the company’s core values and how it helped Zappos scale up as a company.
• Your company can’t be all things to all people.
• The power of adding to what you already have.

And as always if you have any questions or want to submit a guest for the podcast that you think would be amazing just reach out on Dig to Fly and I’ll do my best to get them on. If you love the interview please take 30 seconds to rate the Dig to Fly podcast on your favorite platform. Thanks!